As a serial entrepreneur and management consultant, I'm interested in the unique dynamics of business partnership. Follow me to read about my personal experiences with partnership, as well as to learn more about how other partnerships establish the ground rules for collaboration and compensation; how they foster harmony and resolve conflict; and what tools business partners use to evolve their relationship as their business grows.

Top 3 Qualities Of A Successful Business Partnership

Clients and colleagues often ask me what criteria to use when judging a potential partnership. It’s not an easy question to answer because, like most relationships, the dynamics vary based on the personalities involved.

That said, there are three elements that you should evaluate before moving forward:

1. Trust

This is non-negotiable. It also needs to be unreserved, unambiguous, and unequivocal.

It’s easy to say, “Sure, I trust this person. They don’t lie, steal or cheat.” But it needs to go way deeper than that. Do you trust them to make the call on a tax issue? What if you’ve disagreed about the topic in question on more than one occasion and never came up with an mutually satisfactory answer? Do you trust them enough to tell them how you really feel about the stunt they pulled at a client meeting? Do you trust them to forgive you if you make a huge, embarrassing mistake?

This is especially tricky when you go into business with a friend. The context for your judgment of that person is so radically different, and it can be tempting to give them the benefit of the doubt — after all, you wouldn’t be friends if you didn’t trust them. The fact is that business is different from friendship so you actually need to be even tougher in your evaluation of a would-be-partner who is a friend.

Think carefully about whether this person has always demonstrated respect for others, including people they don’t like. Are they fair and reasonable in day-to-day negotiations? How do they handle political or religious conversations? Do you believe them when they say they are sorry?

One of my partners was once a dear friend. Our friendship changed after our first, hard year of business, and, although we tried to rebuild, we never really recovered. I remember a conversation during our “remission” when I mentioned, in reference to another situation, that if you don’t trust someone to react reasonably to an upsetting emotion or difficult information, it sets up a barrier to intimacy. She surprised me by asking if I trusted her. I hedged my answer — because I wanted to trust her, but didn’t. Looking back, that moment of my own delusion and dishonesty foretold the unraveling.

2. Compatible communication styles

If one person wants to talk it all out, and the other person just wants to move on without processing, it’s going to be tough to get through the kinds of conversations you need to have as business partners. When one of you flubs a client meeting, or someone has an inappropriate conversation with an employee, that’s going to have to be resolved through discussion. If one person presses and the other stonewalls, it’s either going to blow up or fester. And the reality is that while it’s possible (but very difficult) to change communication styles, that process takes a long time under the best of circumstances. A new business is not the best of circumstances, and most of us don’t have the luxury of a long runway.

You also need to figure out what your code of conduct will be for dialogue: Is it okay to bring up heavy topics in emails? Is it okay to continue heavy conversations that started in person via email? Is email ever not okay? What if an IM escalates unexpectedly?

Although I tend to prefer in-person talks, I can see the benefit of framing a conversation in advance to give folks a chance to digest and consider the issues. It’s best to be flexible. However, even that is an approach so it needs to be agreed upon in advance.

3. Complementary skills

A therapist who coached my former partners and I pointed out that a large percentage of our conflict stemmed from the fact that two of us were experts in the same area and we just didn’t agree on most topics. It didn’t mean that one of us was right or wrong. The answer to end the continuum of conflict was simple: On projects where our skills overlapped, we simply wouldn’t collaborate anymore because it created needless, unwinable arguments.

For my wine store, the lines in the sand are bright: He’s finance, I’m legal. He’s the product development guy, I handle marketing. We still collaborate, but we’ve eliminated a number of possible points of tension simply because we each defer to the person with the expertise.

If you can look at your prospective business partner, and check off all three of these criteria, you’re ahead of the game.

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